Happy birthday, hydrogenaudio!, 10 years of audio empiricism on the net Options

[Northpack]

Some time ago I though to myself: oh dear, it's been almost ten years now that you are into this nerdy audio forum. Well, I remember I came over here from r3mix, which had been at least as nerdy but certainly much less substantial than hydrogenaudio prooved to be. And most fataly: it had no TOS#8

I wondered when exactly Dibrom opened hydrogenaudio (aka Project Mayhem) to the public and found a post in the Winamp forums by JohnV, dating from September 30th 2001:

The forum is just over 24hours old, so don't expect yet completely full message sections. Things are looking very nice though... So check it out and register your nick.

Although earliest registrations date from September 18th, I guess we can trust JohnV that hydrogenaudio.org was opened to the public on September 29th 2001, which is exactly 10 years ago today. The earliest snapshop of the forum archived at web.archive.org dates from March 2002 though.

Yeah, I know, we nerds tend to be a bit ahistorical, but we like to have a party sometimes, don't we?

This post has been edited by Northpack: Sep 29 2011, 20:00

[euphonic]

I can't believe it's been 10 full years already since I began lurking here! 10 years translates on my part to lots of hours at the computer screen indeed, not to mention information and access to a lot of freeware. Happy anniversary.

One quibble I have with the subtitle, though, concerns the usage of 'objectivism' as shorthand for HA's methodology, as frankly the association of the term with that kind of politics and worldview makes me cringe. The Ayn Rand connection also makes it easier for audio relativists to dismiss HA as steeped in dogma, elitist, etc. Also, identifying the site with the 'objective' POV (as if that were possible for any human to assume) insinuates, however mildly, that HA's view is the puerile one that its opponents are opponents merely because they're limited by their subjectivity (even if such so often appears to be the case).

I know it's not that great a fit either, but maybe 'empiricism' would be a more useful, or at least more neutral, term?

This post has been edited by euphonic: Oct 5 2011, 07:15

[Northpack]

One quibble I have with the subtitle, though, concerns the usage of 'objectivism' as shorthand for HA's methodology, as frankly the association of the term with that kind of politics and worldview makes me cringe. The Ayn Rand connection also makes it easier for audio relativists to dismiss HA as steeped in dogma, elitist, etc. Also, identifying the site with the 'objective' POV (as if that were possible for any human to assume) insinuates, however mildly, that HA's view is the puerile one that its opponents are opponents merely because they're limited by their subjectivity (even if such so often appears to be the case).

I know it's not that great a fit either, but maybe 'empiricism' would be a more useful, or at least more neutral, term?

Agreed. I have to explain that Ayn Rand and her pseudo-philsophy are neither popular nor taken seriously here in Europe, so that the term objectivism doesn't have that kind of connotation for me and probably most other Europeans who have never heard of A.R. Even though I know about her and her use of the term it wouldn't have come to my mind in connection to HA.

This post has been edited by Northpack: Oct 5 2011, 08:33